A husband-and-wife (I think) entertainer team land on a planet (or maybe they crash). The planet has beings on it that seem intelligent, but not highly advanced. The Earthlings decide to put on a show for them, even though it’s not clear they have the capacity to appreciate it. I recall they told them ‘Joe Miller jokes’, and I think they showed films. The crowd of aliens grew every day. One day the team decided to change up the routine, and the aliens became angry and hostile. They thought the Earthlings’ show was the Word of God. That is, they weren’t at the shows for entertainment; they were there worshiping, and became angry when the basis of their religion was changed.
I don’t know this one and I’m kinda exhausted at the moment so my google-fu is off; I’ll offer the best help I can tho: CALLING ANDY L! CALLING ANDY L!
Some of the details from the OP don’t fit, but a lot of that sounds like the beginning of the novel Han Solo’s Revenge by Brian Daley (one of the first “Expanded Universe” spin-offs from Star Wars, originally published back in 1979).
In that book it’s not a “husband and wife team”, it’s Han Solo and Chewbacca. And there are no “Joe Miller jokes”. It’s not really the major plot of the book, just sort of an amusing episode before the main action of the story: Han and the Wookiee are sort of stuck in a backwater part of a backwater planet, notably a very arid desert part of said planet. There’s some backstory about how Han was carrying a legitimate cargo for once, but there was some mix-up and Han wound up getting stuck with ownership of a “holoprojector”. The only (3-D) movie he has available is a travelogue about some water planet, but the backwards natives in this desert region seem to love it and watch it over and over again (paying for the privilege with various native “delicacies” that Han doesn’t really want or need, but also sometimes throwing in local jewelry and artwork). Then Han manages to score a new holofilm (a musical number), and figures his “customers” will be thrilled to have some fresh material to watch, but as the OP says, he’d accidentally founded a new religion (a travelogue about a water planet seems like some kind of supernatural paradise to these desert dwellers); the “admission price” that his “customers” were giving him were actually “offerings”. When Han starts showing the singing-and-dancing holofilm, the natives riot and Han and the Wookiee have to flee offworld in the Millennium Falcon, kicking off the main action of the book.
Maybe there’s either another story out there with a very similar plot to the beginning of Han Solo’s Revenge (or the beginning of Han Solo’s Revenge is very similar to this other work, as the case may be, in terms of which came first), or else possibly the OP is getting a couple of different stories mixed together in his recollection.
Thanks for the vote of confidence Snowboarder. I don’t know this one of the top of my head (and haven’t had much luck with googling, though I ran across a story for which I’d been looking for some time). MEBuckner’s suggestion sounds promising though.
There’s definitely no Star Wars connection. Aside from the novelisation of the movie, I’ve only read one Star Wars book. It may have been the first one. I read it in the '70s, and I recall it was before Luke found out Leia was his sister in the films.
The story in question was a short story that I read in an anthology in the late-'70s or early-'80s. At the time I was reading all of the Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison books that were available, and Omni magazines, and other SF anthologies. I suspect it was written in the '50s, but I have no way of knowing. ISTR ‘Joe Miller jokes’ being written as ‘joemillerjokes’ (or similar) as if the aliens understood it to be one word. I’d thought that Joe Miller was a vaudevillian, rather than an early-18th Century actor and comedian.
That does sound somehow familiar. Possibly a Sheckley story? (Philip Jose Farmer does mention Joe Miller in his Riverworld books, but I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for).
How about “Wonderbird” by Algis Budrys and Harlan Ellison? There is some variation from the description of the OP, but I thought of it as soon as I read the thread title.
I was going to post an excerpt but I’m too lazy to look at the rules to see how much was permissible. Excerpts, at least, are readily available online.
